


Photographic

by mageswolf



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7169855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mageswolf/pseuds/mageswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Did you know? The Sharingan gives the user photographic memory.<br/>----------------------<br/>Every time he falls asleep, he sees a memory that is not his, never his. They have no sound, only pictures. His brother could not see without his Sharingan for the last few years of his life, and so his last six years were recorded in perfect detail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photographic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surfacage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surfacage/gifts).



> Based on [this](http://surfacage.tumblr.com/post/142950753419/did-you-know-the-sharingan-gives-the-user) post by surfacage on tumblr.

The Sharingan gives its user photographic memory. Everything that was seen through an activated Sharingan was recorded forever in its user’s mind. It had occurred to Sasuke, once that Itachi must remember killing the clan. That Kakashi must remember whoever he had spoken of losing before Sasuke had left.

The tenth time he falls asleep after receiving Itachi’s Sharingan, Sasuke dreams.

He is kneeling on the tallest cliff overlooking the Nakano River. His head is aching, a pulsing pain shooting from his eyes to the base of his skull. Below him the water is rushing, rushing, and Shisui’s corpse is washing away down-stream, blood still leaving empty eye sockets. His chest feels as though it is being ripped apart and his last kiss is still warm on his lips. He wants to release the scream that builds in his throat but he can’t, he can’t because no one can know. He will never be allowed to mourn this man.

* * *

Sasuke awakes with a start, and knows that something behind his eyes has changed. Something in his mind is different.

For example, he knows that there is a dango stand in a tiny village along the north border of water country that makes the best dango he has ever tasted. Not too chewy, not too dry. Sometimes they have taro mochi, and it’s so good that even Shisui would have liked it.

Sasuke doesn’t even like sweets, and he barely remembers a distant cousin who died in the Nakano years ago, let alone what he liked to eat.

He sits up and swings his legs over the bed to put on his sandals, and he is surprised when the zipper does not catch.

The zipper never catches, these sandals are brand new.

As Sasuke realizes what has happened, he feels nausea begin rising in his gut. His throat grows tight, his breathing heavy.

The Sharingan give its user a photographic memory. Only, these aren’t his Sharingan.

* * *

Every time he falls asleep, he sees a memory that is not his, never his. They have no sound, only pictures. His brother could not see without his Sharingan for the last few years of his life, and so his last six years were recorded in perfect detail. The memories are never in order, no sequence to when they filter through his dreams.

He is 17 and back in Konoha for the first time in four years. He sees Sasuke (his little brother, his life, the only reason he is surviving all of this), so much more grown up then he was when he was kneeling in their family’s blood cursing Itachi’s name. He is talking to Kakashi-senpai (not his senpai, not anymore, hates him just as much as the rest of the village). The mission had been offered to Deidara and Sasori, but Itachi had taken it, argued his knowledge of the village was a larger asset. Really he needed to go home, needed to see that Sasuke was alive, was well, that Danzo had held up his end of the bargain. He is glad that Sasuke is on Kakashi’s team, knows his old captain is a good man.

He is lying on his back in a huge field in Grass country, and he is reaching up into a sky that is flooded with stars. He thinks perhaps he can see eternity from here, and it feels peaceful. It makes him feel, makes all of this, feel small.

One of his crows always brings him something shiny, a stone or a key or a piece of sea glass. Sasuke cannot hear anything, but he knows without a doubt that this crow’s name is Shisui.

He is curled in on himself in a worn bed inside a room in a tiny inn outside of Stone. His is coughing blood onto the sheets, hemorrhaging his lungs onto the worn cotton and sashiko pillow cases. He doesn’t try to avoid the sheets anymore. He finds that he no longer cares. He has been taking seven pills a day for weeks now, his lungs are caving in and his vision is all but gone. He only has so many inn bedrooms left to stay in, because soon it will be over, soon he can rest. He can see Shisui again and die knowing he did his job, he served his village.

He is 19 and his best friend is a sociopathic shark person. He is under no illusion that Kisame is good or kind or would go out of his way to save Itachi, but he is all that Itachi has, now. That says something about him as a person, he supposes. Perhaps is just that starved for human contact, or perhaps there is a comfort in someone who does not feel guilt consuming them for taking lives. Regardless, Kisame makes him laugh and doesn’t ask questions and-

Sasori is the first of them to die, and Konan releases ten thousand paper cranes into the wind for him. She is like him, Itachi thinks. She never wanted to live like this. She hates him because he killed his family, what she prizes above all else, but he wonders if they may have been friends in another life. But in this one, he know that no cranes will be released for him when he dies.

When Itachi killed the clan he used Tsukuyomi on the children, made sure they felt nothing that happened to them.

* * *

Sasuke’s head is bursting with memories that are not his and he wants to yell, scream, because this burden is not his to bear. He does not want to know his brother’s dreams and pain and hurt. He does not want to know that his nail polish smeared on his pinky every time and Kisame refused to paint his toes and how Grass country smelt after a thunder storm. How he counted his steps along wooden paths and Yukio, the name of the little girl who gave him a flower in Rice country, when he visited her grandmother for a treatment.

He does not want to know Itachi’s inane habits, polishing his ring and braiding his hair and brewing tea so strong Kisame couldn't stomach it. How when he was younger, every time Shisui kissed him he would brush Itachi’s hair behind his ear. How tears blurred his vision as their parents forgave him for their murder.

The night before he fought Sasuke he went to a temple and gave all his salary share to the old woman running it. She had been a priestess there her whole life, and he asked her to pray for his little brother, and if the next night she would light Itachi a stick of funeral incense he would appreciate it very much.

Most of all Sasuke does not want to know that the last thing Itachi thought about before his heart stopped was Sasuke, when he was still a child. They were at a festival and Itachi bought him a headband with cat ears from a vendor, and Sasuke wore it for days afterward.

Sasuke sees his brother’s memories as his (Itachi’s, Shisui’s) eyes fill with tears, and he sinks to his knees.

* * *

The Sharingan gives its user a photographic memory. Some would say that is its greatest curse.


End file.
